Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 16:17:52 EST
Sender: WRITERS
From: old flattop
Subject: SUB: (nonfiction) The Web (or why spiders don't fall down...)
Grace E Aspinall mentioned...
- ok, I'll ask the dumb question: what does the WEB mean?
I know you withdrew the question later, but here's one crack at
answering it...
comments? noses held in disbelief?
tink
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The Web (or why spiders don't fall down...)
Copyright 1995 Mike Barker
Once upon a time, there was a network. This network was called the
internet. It was a pretty neat little network, with strange services
like FTP (File Transfer Protocol), Telnet, and other nerdy things. Of
course, the only people who could use it were people with red square
eyes, and no one really trusted these gurus of the geeky classes, but
that was virtual life.
(itsy-bitsy spider went up the spider spout...)
Then came the day that the other people wanted in. For reasons only
partially understood but generally conceded to have something to do
with games and sitting as a way of life, those unwashed hordes also
wanted in. Couch potatoes with mice wanted a slice of the band for
their width, too, or something like that.
For a while, it was amusing to watch the hordes struggling to figure
out the primitive, confusing, downright nerdy ways of the net. Some
filthy types made personal fortunes assuring the hordes that there was
some rationality underlying the net.
What a grand and glorious lie!
The traffic in such books, impersonal appearances, and other
consulting opportunities continues unabated to this day. Apparently
many people would rather pay good money than admit that someone might
have built something without sensible organization.
(down came the rain and washed the spider out...)
However, other people seem to have made the mistake of thinking that
the net must exist for a reason. They even went so far as to create
some new services to try to provide this missing piece (little
realizing that they have at last created a problem which the net has
been waiting to solve for lo these many confusing years--oh, and we'll
take a heaping measure of high-speed lines, extra memory, crank up the
processors, and toss in spare storage wherever it fits, please?).
Anyway, they put together Mosaic (netscape navigator, lynx, and other
names). These are programs that actually use the net.
What do they do with the net?
Aha. This is interesting. You see, these programs allow access to the
web. And, of course, that's where we came in...you'd like to know what
the web is, right?
(but the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again...)
The key part of the web is a dream. That dream is that users everywhere
(yes, you, me, little johnnie and phil and ann and...) all of us,
everywhere, would put together little pieces of stuff with these special
formatting instructions inside that tell those programs how to poke
around in your files.
So I can (for example) take some of my files and make another file that
has a list of those files, with directions for how to get to them. I
can tell you how to get to one of the top files in my particular
collection, and then just by selecting some of the directions I've
written, you can rummage around in my files!
Oddly enough, the web has worked. The formatting instructions are
simple enough for almost anyone to do some nice things, and people have
spent time making their own little pots of information for people to dip
into (we won't even mention the "personal publishing" angle here,
although I suspect we could). People spruce their own little gardens of
information up, add to them, and keep the whole mess growing.
Businesses hit the network at about the same time as this revolution in
information handling was going on. They've grabbed hold and are
providing many, many pages of information.
The various services (mci, maybe others) also have started tying up to
the internet at the same time, and some provide Mosaic (or similar)
interfaces for their users.
So, I think I would say the web is a dream.
Individuals everywhere creating their own information, laying it out in
their own ways, and then providing anyone in the world with free access
to that information? You must be kidding, right? Hippy dreams...
Guess what. The hobbyists are busily making this dream a reality, and
the professionals are the ones who are skating along behind, trying to
catch up!
(and the itsy-bitsy spider WON!:-)
If you have full internet abilities at your local site, you owe it to
yourself and your future networking abilities to learn about this
technology. (ask your local operator if you can telnet. if they say
yes, ask them where Mosaic, lynx, and netscape navigator are and how to
run them!)
If the information superhighway is the network of the future, the web is
probably the scenery along the way, and Mosaic and its relatives are the
model T's just starting to fill the roadways.
('cause the itsy-bitsy spider peeked ahead and spun a little web...)
Hope this helps.
tink
almost forgot--and they read happily ever after!
[next time--html ain't heavy, it's just a red pen...]
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